Ross, who released his high-definition version of the Bob-Omb Battlefield for play in a browser, or on a computer running Windows, Mac, or Linux, didn't have any intention of selling the game and made it available for free.

Still, Nintendo sent Content Delivery Network (CDN) Cloudflare a complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) this week demanding that the fan recreation be taken down:

The house that built Tomb Raider sat on top of the world in 1998. Fresh from two gang-busting chart toppers that eventually amassed roughly 15 million in sales between them, Core Design and its parent company Eidos prepared to release a third adventure for starlet Lara Croft—a video game character so immensely and immediately popular that she was a household name within a year of her introduction. Croft quickly became an icon not just of the burgeoning, maturing games industry, but also of popular culture. She was on the covers of magazines such as Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Time. And she later found her way onto the silver screen, portrayed by Angelina Jolie in two blockbuster films. Ms. Croft seemed to be everywhere.

Tomb Raider developer Core Design appeared untouchable with Lara in tow, and it was thanks to the franchise's immense success that publisher Eidos had just been named the fastest-growing company in the world at the 1998 World Economic Forum. But the studio's creative origins clashed with the publicly traded Eidos' year-in, year-out reliance on the Tomb Raider brand as a money-making machine. By the end of 2003—the year that the disastrous, hellishly developed sixth Tomb Raider in seven years was forced out unfinished—they were laughing stocks of the entertainment world.

Embarrassed at losing face, Eidos put Core Design co-founder and CEO Jeremy Heath-Smith on gardening leave (suspension with pay) for a year and yanked the Tomb Raider franchise from its home. The British heroine was packed off to Legacy of Kain developer Crystal Dynamics in the US, where she has arguably flourished without the pressures of annualized sequels.

Because Sony has refused to officially lower the price of the PS4 below its $400 starting point (aside from occasionalholidaydeals), getting a good deal on the system requires looking for bundle offers from retailers eager to move stock. A few offers are going on right now, and they provide additional hardware and software on top of the base PS4 package (which already includes a downloadable code for The Last of Us).

Best Buy is currently offering a free PlayStation camera valued at $60 alongside any new PlayStation 4 system purchase. The camera isn't exactly a must-have accessory these days, as it's mainly useful for adding your voice and face to Twitch streaming or playing a handful of games like Just Dance 2014. But the camera will eventually be a key part of Sony's "Project Morpheus" virtual reality solution, scheduled for early next year. At that point, it will be necessary equipment to track the headset and the PlayStation Move hand-tracking controllers. Getting that camera for free now is sure to decrease the necessary entry fee when Sony finally joins the VR race.

If a free camera doesn't appeal to you, Amazon has its own deal on the PS4 right now, offering a copy of Bloodborne and a $20 gift card on top of the included Last of Us download code. At Wal-mart, you can get the system with The Last of Us, an extra controller, and your choice of Watch Dogs, Need for Speed: Rivals or Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, all for the base price of $400.

On Friday, a longtime Mortal Kombat producer used his Twitter account to denounce the service over how it enables anonymous abuse, then said he will "quit" the site.

Shaun Himmerick, executive producer of the upcoming sequel Mortal Kombat X, responded to a tweet from a supposed fighting-game fan with a less-than-charming request for the series' next iteration. The fan's Twitter account no longer exists; it may have been suspended after the user sexually threatened Himmerick's wife over whether a longtime MK character might return to the new sequel.

Himmerick posted a screencap of the offending tweet with the caption, "Why I'll quit Twitter." He then clarified that his beef wasn't with posts about his games but about his family. He decried attacks aimed at both him and his daughter, though he didn't repost or quote any examples of these—it's not clear whether these threats have also been made or whether he was being preemptive.

A New Jersey video game shop fell victim to a calculated "swatting" attempt on Saturday night—one that, according to reports, nearly saw the victim play an active role in inflaming the police response.

The story began by resembling far too many other recent swatting attempts. As Jersey area news site Cliff View Pilot reported, Passaic County officers received an anonymous, phony tip about a hostage situation with shotguns and wounded victims. The location in question was a video game store in Clifton, New Jersey, called Digital Press. The store was hosting its usual monthly gaming meetup that night—ironically, one devoted to "super cute" video games—and the county sheriff's department sent a SWAT team to the shopping strip in question to investigate.

What made this swatting different from other recent high-profile cases, according to tips sent to gaming site Kotaku, was that the victims also received an anonymous call that attempted to pour gasoline on the fire. The game shop's Web administrator, Frankie Viturello, told a story of seeing a police presence begin to descend upon the store's shopping district, at which point the 40-strong crowd of gamers locked the shop's doors and relocated away from the windows and toward the building's basement. Soon afterward, the shop received a call from a supposed fire department representative.

A group of school principals in Cheshire, England is warning parents that they will be on the lookout for evidence that children in their care have access to adult video games at home and will "contact the Police and Children's Social Care" if they are made aware of it.

The Nantwich Education Partnership, which represents 16 schools in Cheshire, sent a note to parents last month expressing concern that "several children have reported playing, or watching adults play games which are inappropriate for their age and have described the levels of violence and sexual content they have witnessed." The letter specifically cites Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Dogs of War (which we assume is a misnamed mangling of God or War or Gears of War) as inappropriate, and also warns parents that children should not have access to Facebook or WhatsApp accounts before they are old enough.

"Access to these games OR to some social media sites such as those above increases early sexualized behaviours (sometimes harmful) in children AND leaves them vulnerable to grooming for sexual exploitation or extreme violence," the letter reads (as reprinted by The Daily Mail). "If your child is allowed to have inappropriate access to any game or associated product that is designated 18+ we will are [sic] advised to contact the Police and Children’s Social Care as it is neglectful."

Earlier this week, a judge ruled (PDF) that Zynga would have to face a revised lawsuit over allegations that it defrauded investors by offering overly-zealous news about the company’s future at the time of its Initial Public Offering (IPO). The investors allege that Zynga knew that an upcoming platform change at Facebook would decrease the company's ability to rake in revenue, but executives concealed that information. After the successful IPO, the complaint says, the executives sold off their Zynga shares before the stock price collapsed.

The investors applied for a class-action lawsuit in July 2012, just after Zynga shares tumbled to $3 per share from a price peak of $15.91 per share. US District Judge Jeffrey White dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit a year ago, but ruled that the game company would have to face a revised complaint from the same investors.

Although Zynga denies the investors’ claims, the plaintiffs say they have at least six confidential witnesses who had access to daily reports on Zynga’s bookings before the IPO. Those witnesses say the company was in decline before the IPO.

The Natural Resources Defense Council recently put out an alarming press release claiming the Xbox One is causing consumers to waste an aggregate of $250 million annually in energy costs. The culprit: the "instant on" mode that draws significant power 24 hours a day, even when the system is supposedly "off."

The NRDC put out the release in an effort to convince Microsoft to turn off this "instant on" setting by default, or to at least offer an option to turn it off on the system's initial setup (as it does in Europe). Until Microsoft takes that step, though, we thought we'd bust out the old Kill A Watt power meter and confirm just how much energy our consoles are wasting when they're not in use, and offer you some tips on how to avoid that potential waste.

Over nine months after The Legend of Zelda was first teased as a 2015 release at last year's E3, and four months after an extensive gameplay reveal at last year's Game Awards, long time series producer Eiji Aonuma now says that "I must apologize to you that were expecting the game by year's end, but we are no longer making a 2015 release our number one priority. Instead, our priority is to make it the most complete and ultimate Zelda game."

In a YouTube message posted through Nintendo's Miiverse messaging service, Aonuma says the team has "discovered several new possibilities" for gameplay while exploring the upcoming game's open world structure. "As we have worked to turn these possibilities into reality, new ideas continue to spring forth, and it now feels like we have the potential to create something that exceeds even my own expectations," he said in remarks translated from Japanese.

"As I have watched our development progress, I have come to think that rather than work with meeting a specific schedule as our main objective, and releasing a game that reflects only what we can create within that scheduled time, I feel strongly that our focus should be to bring of these ideas to life in a way that will make The Legend of Zelda on Wii U the best game it can possibly be," he continued. In additional text remarks, he added that the development team has "decided to not show the game at this year’s E3."

According to a report published Friday by security firm Symantec, underground markets and, in some cases, sites on the open Web host several services promising to generate large viewing audiences on Twitch and other streaming sites. One such service claims that each infected computer can be commandeered to open five separate streams carried on a selected broadcaster's Twitch channels. (To keep owners of the compromised computers in the dark, the streams are hidden and muted.) Premium services also offer automated "chatters" that interject users' comments live during the streaming.

An ad for one for-hire Twitch botnet.

Symantec

"While many broadcasters stream their gameplay online as a hobby, some have managed to turn it into a well-paid full time job," Symantec researcher Lionel Payet wrote. "Over the past few years, this business model has grown sharply, so it's unsurprising that scammers are piggybacking on the industry in a parallel underground economy."

With its Rift development kit program, Oculus has charged $300 to $350 to tens of thousands of developers (and doubtless some ultra-early-adopting consumers) who wanted to get their hands on early versions of the headset. Valve is going in a different direction with the Vive VR headset it's developing in conjunction with HTC, offering an early Developer Edition for free to qualified developers.

So far, Valve and HTC have seeded kits to a handful of specially chosen developers, including Owlchemy Labs (Aaaaaa! For The Awesome), Bossa Studios (Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread), Fireproof Games (The Room), and Cloudhead Games (The Gallery). Others will have to wait; "more info and 'sign up' forms will be available to all interested developers, big or small, via a new site coming soon," Valve spokesperson Doug Lombardi told Ars Technica. The current hope is to get the sign-up site up and running next week, Lombardi says.

Approved developers will get a Developer Edition kit that "will be free, at least initially," Lombardi said. Those kits will start shipping later in the spring as part of an "ongoing effort" to get the development hardware out widely ahead of a planned 2015 consumer launch. The decision to release it for free is interesting given that HTC Connected Products Marketing Executive Director Jeff Gattis recently said consumers should expect "a slightly higher price point" for the final version of the hardware.

Since its November launch, Nintendo's Amiibo toy line has mostly been used to unlock cosmetic bonuses in Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games. That changed last week with a downloadable update to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, whose new puzzle-filled mode requires a supply-limited Toad figurine to unlock.

The new "hide-and-seek" mode, while admittedly simple, strays significantly from its source game. It asks players to rotate and scour the game's small, detailed levels to find a hidden, animated "pixel Toad" icon somewhere on the walls. Once you see one, tap it on the gamepad's screen to clear the challenge; these, like a Where's Waldo book, range from stupidly easy to "holy crap where the heck is Toad" hard, especially since the icon sometimes runs around the level. As of press time, this mode only unlocks with a Toad Amiibo; other Mario series toys will only unlock boring old bonus lives in the game.

A quick glance at sites like Amazon, Best Buy, and Gamestop shows that the Toad figure is already hard to come by online and low in stock at brick-and-mortar locations; it hasn't risen to $100-plus gold Mario levels, but Captain Toad completists may want to rush to get in on the hide-and-seek action. We have asked Nintendo whether the company plans to make this mode available without the Amiibo or whether to expect more intense Amiibo-specific game content in the near future, and we'll update this report with any response.

As amazing as Half-Life 2 was when it was first released in 2004, time has not been kind to the original release's graphics, which can look a bit flat and dated compared to modern PC games. Enter Romanian modder Filip Victor, who's ready to release the final version of a massive, Source engine-powered graphical update for the game on Steam for free tomorrow.

As shown in a slick comparison trailer and detailed in a PDF brochure, Half-Life 2: Update offers graphical improvements like high dynamic range lighting, improved fog and particle effects, world reflections, more detailed water rendering, improved background models, and other effects that just weren't feasible back in 2004. The update also fixes a number of animation and cut-scene-activation bugs that have persisted in the original release and adds optional fan commentary from a number of high-profile YouTube personalities.

Despite all the graphical changes, the update leaves the original gameplay, level design, character models, textures, and animations intact. "The goal of Half-Life 2: Update is to fix up, polish, and visually enhance Half-Life 2, without ever changing the 2004 original’s core gameplay, or time-tested style," Victor wrote in the update's brochure. "I wanted to ensure that the update was something that would be enduring, and worth the time it takes to play it. I hope that both newcomers and veterans of the Half-Life series will enjoy seeing the work that went into its creation."

When I sat down with her in January 2015, Zoe Quinn looked like she'd been through hell.

In the public eye, Quinn was a number of things: an independent video game developer; a withdrawn, idiosyncratic presence at recent game conferences; and a visible victim of—and advocate against—a rising tide of anonymous abuse and harassment. The Zoe Quinn I met at a restaurant in the Pacific Northwest on a brisk January afternoon was more troubled than I’d ever seen before. Fingers shaking, eyes shifting, posture sulking.

Only a few months earlier, the video game maker’s Twitter feed had become dominated by responses to, and stories about, the anonymous online harassment that she and her peers had received in the wake of the #GamerGate hashtag. GamerGate is hard to categorize—leaderless, amorphous, flitting from one issue to the next at a moment’s notice—but Quinn became involved early on due to allegations an ex-boyfriend made about her romantic relationship with a games writer.

Blizzard will soon allow World of Warcraft players to trade purchased game time for in-game gold, and vice versa, effectively putting an official, floating real-world value on the in-game currency.

With yesterday's rollout of WoW patch 6.12, Blizzard says it's ready to introduce the "WoW token," a new in-game item that can be traded for 30 days of play time in the subscription-based MMO. Blizzard says the new feature will be launched in the Americas "once Patch 6.1.2 has been live for a while [to] help us ensure the foundation for the feature is solid." Other regions will get tokens further down the line.

WoW tokens will be available for purchase from the in-game shop for $20 or "the rough equivalent" in other regions. That's somewhat more than the $14.99 maximum usually charged for a single month's subscription fee, but the tokens differ from regular subscription game time because they can be exchanged for in-game gold through an in-game auction house.

As the new wave of virtual reality headsets barrel ever closer to consumer reality, the effects of "simulator sickness" on a significant portion of the population remain a concern. A group of researchers at Purdue University say they've found an easy way to mitigate this effect by adding one bit of reality that most VR simulations leave out: a virtual nose sitting persistently at the corners of your vision.

Offering a fixed object that doesn't shift as you move around a virtual world has been shown to help anchor many VR users, reducing the apparent difference between visual and sensorimotor stimuli that can lead to simulation sickness. That's useful for VR experiences that can insert a virtual cockpit or vehicular frame around the user. A virtual nose, though, has the potential to be much more generalizable to any VR experience that takes place from a first-person perspective.

The Purdue study divided 43 undergraduate volunteers into two groups. The first group went through two unmodified virtual reality demos on Oculus Rift development kits, while the other went through the same demos with the virtual nose placed where a real nose would appear in front of the environmental view. The "nasum virtualis" group lasted an average of 94.2 seconds longer in a simulated walk-around on a Tuscan villa before feeling sick and lasted 2.2 seconds longer on average in a roller coaster simulation.

Update (March 25): Sony has confirmed that the version 2.5 PS4 firmware will be available for download tomorrow, March 26. In addition to the features discussed below, Sony announced the update will also bring the ability to back up the PS4's internal hard drive to an external USB disk, to find PS4 friends through a Facebook account connection, and to upload recorded videos to DailyMotion in addition to other options. More details are available on the PlayStation Blog.

Original Story (March 12)

Way back in February 2013, Sony's Mark Cerny promised that the PlayStation 4 would include a handy suspend and quick-resume feature. The idea was to pause a game, then leave the console in an "idle mode" that kept the game state in memory, allowing players to pick up later from that exact point with no loading required. Then, just before the system's November 2013 launch, Sony announced that the feature wouldn't be ready in time for the system's North American release.

In the letter, posted to Gen Con's Twitter account, Gen Con CEO Adrian Swartout spoke of the event's "diverse attendee base" made up of visitors from around the world, and he made clear that such diversity included factors like cultures, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences. After pointing out the event's economic benefit to the state, Swartout argued that the legislation "could allow for refusal of service or discrimination against our attendees," which would ultimately "factor into our decision-making" on returning to the Indiana Convention Center "in future years."

]]>http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/usas-largest-gaming-expo-threatens-to-leave-indiana-over-anti-gay-bill/feed/0http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/usas-largest-gaming-expo-threatens-to-leave-indiana-over-anti-gay-bill/Report: YouTube Live will launch in 2015 with focus on game streaminghttp://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/gaming/~3/K_L1jxgUEmE/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/report-youtube-live-will-launch-in-2015-with-focus-on-game-streaming/#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 23:12:33 +0000http://arstechnica.com/?p=635399

As such, we weren't surprised to see a Tuesday report alleging that Google's YouTube arm is moving ahead with a game-streaming backup plan. The Daily Dot, quoting "sources within the streaming industry," reported that a "new-look YouTube Live" will launch in the foreseeable future, and that service will target live gaming and e-sports content in particular.

As proof of its seriousness, YouTube has already hired over 50 streaming-savvy engineers, the report said, and it hinted to "promotions and partnerships" designed to encourage more e-sports viewing on the main YouTube site. The Daily Dot predicted a YouTube Live reveal timed around this June's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. When asked about the report, a YouTube representative declined to comment to Ars and instead sent us an animated GIF of a little girl shrugging her shoulders. (No, seriously. This one.)

A malicious user exploited the somewhat open submission structure of Steam's Greenlight section over the weekend to briefly hide malware links in cloned versions of legitimate game pages.

Polygon reports that a Steam user going by the handle bluebunny14 posted copies of pages for five games to the Steam's Greenlight section over the weekend. The cloned pages copied the text, screenshots, and videos of existing Greenlight games, including Melancholy Republic and The Maze, to look exactly like legitimate titles seeking attention in Steam's fan-voting area. But the cloned versions of the pages also included links to purported "beta version" links for the games that instead linked users to what Polygon calls "a known Trojan."

After being posted Sunday, the malicious links were reportedly removed by early Monday, and the cloned game pages themselves reportedly removed by Monday afternoon. "Community members alerted us of the situation over the weekend by flagging the content," said Valve's Doug Lombardi in a statement. "Our Community Moderators responded quickly by removing all malicious links from the fake Greenlight material and then we banned the submissions. We are taking further steps to deal with anyone involved in posting the links. We'd like to thank those who reported the issue in addition to our Community Moderators, and we encourage everyone to report any suspicious activity in the future by using the flag icon located throughout the Steam Community."

After learning that I had undergone a transfusion of the blood—the blood that serves as currency, medicine, religious symbolism, and much more in Bloodborne’s gothic world—I left my basement hospital bed to explore the world above. I was, of course, killed. Repeatedly.

Everything seemed to be in order.

Whenever the Souls games (Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2) are discussed, the focus usually falls on the series' punishing difficulty. Focusing on that one design element, though, obscures talk about the games’ incredible, interconnected worlds and the wonderful feeling of exploration they engender. That insignificant enemy that can kill you with three telegraphed sword strikes is just as important as the dozen-hour trek through the sewers to unlock a door in a forest valley half a world away.

Make no mistake; Bloodborne is a Souls game in everything but name, sharing a development lineage in From Software and Director Hidetaka Miyazaki. From the controls to the way progress is lost upon death, the sound effects to the goofy ragdoll physics, anyone with a passing familiarity with the series will recognize Bloodborne as part of the same family. But Bloodborne marks a departure from the Souls name, even while keeping the series' characteristic punishing repeat deaths, massive bosses, and environmental storytelling.

Twitch, the Amazon-owned game video streaming service, has reset passwords for all its users after warning of a security breach that may have allowed hackers to access user names, passwords, and other personal information.

According to a blog post Twitch published Monday evening, current passwords have been expired and users will be required to create a new one the next time they log in. Accounts have also been disconnected from Twitter and YouTube. As is standard practice, anyone who used the same password for multiple services should assume it's compromised and create a new and unique passcode for each property. Credit card data was not affected, the company said.

Monday's advisory provided few details. E-mails sent to users said hackers may have gained unauthorized access to Twitch usernames and associated e-mail addresses, encrypted passwords, the last IP address users logged in from, and—for users who provided such information—first and last names, phone numbers, addresses, and dates of birth. According to a report from Venturebeat, a separate e-mail sent only to select users provided an intriguing additional detail. "While we store passwords in a cryptographically protected form, we believe it's possible that your password could have been captured in clear text by malicious code when you logged into our site on March 3rd," it said.

Nintendo didn't offer any official comment since The Wall Street Journalfirst reported that Netflix was adapting The Legend of Zelda series into a "Game of Thrones for a family audience"-style series. Now, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has addressed the report obliquely in an interview with Time, though in a way that leaves a bit of wiggle room.

"As of now, I have nothing new to share with you in regard to the use of our IPs for any TV shows or films, but I can at least confirm that the article in question is not based on correct information," Iwata said.

That seems like a pretty firm denial, especially as far as the usually silent-on-rumors Nintendo is concerned. If you want to parse Iwata's words with an ultra-fine comb, you could suggest that maybe only part of the Journal's report was correct, but that's a bit of a stretch.

For all the problems Battlefield: Hardline's single-player campaign has with story, tone, and pacing, at least it tried to do something different. That same spirit of risk-taking doesn’t really carry over to the multiplayer side of the game, which is surely the most important part to many Battlefield veterans.

Hardline drapes a cops and robbers facade over what are primarily the same multiplayer modes and styles of gunplay the series has relied on since Battlefield 3. That’s not exactly a damning indictment of the game, especially given the existence of a few new standout modes to complement the familiar design.

Like its predecessors, Hardline is larger, slower, and much more open than most of the multiplayer shooters that follow in the footsteps of Modern Warfare’s success. If you haven't played Battlefield in a while (or outright skipped Battlefield 4 thanks to the horror stories about glitches and server issues), it might be an adjustment. It’s the kind of game where running around like an idiot without checking your environment will get you killed incredibly quickly. Snipers line every fire escape and rooftop, ready to pick you off unseen from 100 meters out if you’re not careful. Helicopters are shot down seconds after takeoff. If you're not paying attention to your minimap, sweeping the horizon for targets, and ducking from cover to cover, it's a safe bet you'll be gunned down almost immediately.

Earlier this week, Llamasoft founder and veteran game developer Jeff Minter first spoke out publicly about his months-long legal disagreements with Atari over the rights to Vita tube shooter TxK and its similarity to Atari's Tempest series. Following some heated public comments on the matter (including complaints of being "savaged by [the] undead corpse" of Atari), Minter spoke to Ars Technica via e-mail to clarify his position on the game and its legal standing in more detail.

Minter says he first heard from "Infogrames" ("I refuse to call them Atari" he says of the ever-changing legal entity that owns Atari's classic IP) last April, through a lawyer-drafted letter about TxK's supposed infringement. "Since then there has been a succession of letters from [legal firm] Dorsey [and Whitney] which basically can be summarized as, 'Give us personal information about your finances or we will fuck you up.'" Even after Minter sent financial information showing that the Vita version of TxK is no longer making any significant income, he says Atari persisted in "demanding that I take down TxK from the PSN store and that I sign papers stating I would never make a Tempest-style game again."

Despite Atari's claims to be in "constant contact" with Minter over the issue, he says he wouldn't classify the back-and-forth bantering between his lawyers and theirs as real communication. "There was never any dialogue as such, just a series of demands with me conceding a little more each time, expecting a little concession from their side in return but never once receiving any," he says.

Further Update: In a follow-up statement posted by Konami, Kojima is quoted as saying "I want to reassure fans that I am 100% involved and will continue working on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain; I’m determined to make it the greatest game I've directed to date. Don’t miss it!"

The new statement once again leaves Kojima out of discussions of the next Metal Gear game, however, and mentions conducting interviews for new staff to lead that development.

Update: In a tweet on the new official Metal Gear Twitter account, Konami has assured fans that "despite rumors, MGSV:TPP-written, designed, directed & produced by Mr.Kojima [sic] is still on track. The team's hard at work. Pls support them!"

PlayStation Denmarkis promoting the upcoming launch of the PS4-exclusive game Bloodborne in a rather unconventional way: a blood drive!

On March 23 at the IT University of Copenhagen, you can donate blood for a chance of getting a free copy of Bloodborne. Rather than automatically receiving a copy of Bloodborne—which would be far too easy—donors must give blood and then roll a die to see if they've won a copy of the new game or another PS4 game. Everyone who gives blood will also be entered into a contest to win a Bloodborne-themed PlayStation 4 console. The blood drive is being carried out by PlayStation Denmark in cooperation with GivBlod, a Danish charity.

Updated: Frederik Hoelge, an Ars Technica reader and student at the IT University, sent us a photo from the Bloodborne blood drive. "The queue started forming a half hour before the event started, at 12, and the queue is still as long, two and a half hours later."

A sample of the microtransaction-driven crane gameplay in the Japan-only "Collectible Badge Center" on the 3DS.

When Nintendo announced earlier this week that it is partnering with mobile gaming giant DeNA to finally bring its characters to the mobile phone marketplace, some were worried about the direction the partnership would take Nintendo's storied game design. DeNA's international success has come on top of a flood of microtransaction-heavy free-to-play mobile games, which often use heavy elements of chance to hook players into slot-machine style item chases.

Nintendo hasn't ruled out that kind of model for its mobile games, but it says that other payment methods will also be considered for individual titles. In an interview with Time, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata noted that what he calls the "free-to-start" business model is popular on mobile phones, and it would "naturally be an option for us to consider." That said, "for each title, we will discuss with DeNA and decide the most appropriate payment method. So, specifically to your question, both [free-to-play and other business models] can be options, and if a new Nintendo-like invention comes of it, then all the better."

Considering the issue further, Iwata said he doesn't want to "choose payment methods that may hurt Nintendo’s brand image or our IP," and that it is important to have a business model "parents feel comfortable letting their children play with. Also, it’s even more important for us to consider how we can get as many people around the world as possible to play Nintendo smart device apps, rather than to consider which payment system will earn the most money."

After I gushed about the impressive virtual reality experience offered in a hands-on demo of the HTC Vive (developed in conjunction with Valve) earlier this month, I commented that the only thing that could really sour me on the hardware's potential at this point was a big price tag, which remains unannounced. Now, an HTC executive is warning that consumers should be prepared for "a slightly higher price point" when the headset is released to consumers later this year.

In an interview with trade publication MCV, HTC Connected Products Marketing Executive Director Jeff Gattis says the company wants "to deliver the most premium VR experience the world has seen." He goes on to insist that's not just marketing hyperbole, but a factual reflection that "this is at the high end" of the market.

"Starting with the premium experience, even if it has a slightly higher price point, is the right thing to do from a strategic point of view," Gattis continues. "The price can always come down as the market grows. We know there is some pent-up demand there, so there’s not so much price sensitivity early on. But to get the broader consumer adoption we’re all hoping for, the industry will have to drive price down to make it more accessible. Whether we do that with Vive or other form factors and devices, we understand the importance of driving price down to achieve adoption."

Update: Minter has posted a letter dated June 2014, sent by Atari law firm Dorsey & Whitney LLP, laying out what it sees as the legally actionable similarities between Tempest and TxK.

Original Story:
Llamasoft developer Jeff Minter is currently embroiled in a heated legal discussion with Atari over the rights to TxK, a tube shooter released last year on the Vita that bears a striking resemblance to 1994 Atari Jaguar release Tempest 2000.

The apparent similarities between Tempest 2000 and TxK are perhaps unsurprising, given that Minter single-handedly did the coding on both games, the former while working for Atari and the latter as an independent developer (credit for 1980's original Tempest, which was the inspiration for Tempest 2000, belongs to Atari's Dave Theurer). Minter even called TxK "an updated version [of Tempest 2000] on modern hardware" when announcing the Vita game back in 2013.

Scanning the gaming news headlines recently, I was surprised to seea fewreports that Valve had begun offering refunds to European Union customers within 14 days of a digital game purchase on Steam. That would indeed be big news, as getting refunds or any resale value for a Steam purchase is usually near-impossible, aside from some one-off exceptions to policy. After sifting through the legalese, though, it seems that Valve's refund policy hasn't actually changed, despite reports to the contrary.

The rumor of a new refund program for European Steam users seems to have started on reddit, where user punikun noted that the following language had been added to the Steam subscriber agreement:

IF YOU ARE AN EU SUBSCRIBER, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO WITHDRAW FROM A PURCHASE TRANSACTION FOR DIGITAL CONTENT WITHOUT CHARGE AND WITHOUT GIVING ANY REASON FOR A DURATION OF FOURTEEN DAYS OR UNTIL VALVE’S PERFORMANCE OF ITS OBLIGATIONS HAS BEGUN WITH YOUR PRIOR EXPRESS CONSENT AND YOUR ACKNOWLEDGMENT THAT YOU THEREBY LOSE YOUR RIGHT OF WITHDRAWAL, WHICHEVER HAPPENS SOONER. THEREFORE, YOU WILL BE INFORMED DURING THE CHECKOUT PROCESS WHEN OUR PERFORMANCE STARTS AND ASKED TO PROVIDE YOUR PRIOR EXPRESS CONSENT TO THE PURCHASE BEING FINAL.

It's easy to read that "right to withdraw" bit at the beginning of that clause and jump to the conclusion that EU law is forcing Valve to adhere to a 14-day return window. Indeed, the EU's directive on consumer rights does generally establish a 14-day "right of withdrawal" for the sale of "distance goods" and the execution of some service contracts.

The slow, trudging dinosaur that is the television industry took another shuffling step toward the modern era on Wednesday in the form of PlayStation Vue. Sony's new live TV-streaming service, announced in November, has now officially launched in three major American markets—New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia—with a three-tier subscription plan in each city.

In short, paying as much as $69.99 per month will let users watch at least 82 network and cable channels over the Internet through their PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles, while downgrading to a $49.99 subscription will drop that station count to about 50 in each market.

Unlike its current major competitor, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue has the upper hand in terms of major network content—meaning CBS, Fox, and NBC, along with many of their cable subsidiaries (MTV/Comedy Central, FX/Fox Sports, and Bravo/USA, respectively). The obvious missing piece of that TV-watching puzzle is the ABC family of stations, and Sling has those in the form of ESPN (and its myriad offshoots) and a few Disney channels. The only major overlap these two Internet-live-TV services share is the Turner family of stations, meaning TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang.

The last time we checked in with Eric "Wingman" Peterson was August of 2014, where he was running Cloud Imperium Games’ Austin office and overseeing development on Star Citizen’s persistent universe. However, just a few months after that, Peterson left Cloud Imperium to develop his own game: a reboot of the mid-'90s first-person shooter game Descent.

Peterson has formed Descendent Studios, hired a development staff, and is currently overseeing a Kickstarter to pull together a minimum of $600,000 to finance development of the game, which is titled Descent Underground. Critically, Descent Underground has something that previous attempts to resurrect the Descent franchise have lacked: a licensing agreement with IP-holder Interplay.

Old name, new presentation

Descent was published by Interplay more than 20 years ago, in 1994. The first-person shooter developed by Parallax Software had players zipping around underground in a series of cavernous (and sometimes claustrophobic) mines filled with mad killer robots. Players navigated the underground environment in a Pyro GX spacecraft, which led to the game’s main selling point: it wasn’t just a regular FPS, but one which offered "six degrees of freedom." In other words, you could move in any direction (X, Y, and Z) and turn in any direction (roll, pitch, yaw).

Unlike its streaming rivals Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Video, however, Yahoo Screen hasn't fully spread its wings across the set-top box universe just yet. And that's no small hurdle to clear when trying to convince network TV fans to take the online plunge. Where, then, can Greendale diehards enroll in their favorite fake community college's sixth season?

To answer that question, Yahoo Screen posted a brief interview explaining precisely where people can go to watch the show's sixth season (Hulu still has streaming rights to seasons 1-5). However, that clip is only visible within the Yahoo Screen universe—so you'll have already answered your question to some extent in order to watch it.

Update: The investing community seems rather bullish on Nintendo's decision to move into mobile gaming. Nintendo's stock was up 27.5 percent in ADR trading for the day, to $18.22 per share. The last time Nintendo's stock price was that high was at the beginning of 2014.

Original Story

After years of speculation from industry watchers and hints from Nintendo itself, the console maker finally confirmed its first steps into mobile phone game development today. As part of a "business and capital alliance" with Japanese mobile gaming mega-publisher DeNA, the companies will "develop and operate new game apps based on Nintendo's IP, including its iconic game characters, for smart devices."

Two Oculus executives had the opportunity to finally put the matter to rest at the South by Southwest conference this weekend, but instead they muddied the waters with cagey non-answers. It's enough to make us worry Oculus might be letting the chase for perfection get in the way of releasing a "good enough" initial product in the near term.

As part of the "Ask Us Anything" panel (archived on Twitch), Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell relayed a comment from a reddit user, who noted that Luckey had previously said "something would have to go terribly wrong for the consumer Rift to not be released by the end of 2015." That's almost exactly how Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe represented the company's position in an interview with Ars last June: "If we haven't shipped by the end of 2015, that's a problem. At least we would be disappointed."

SAN FRANCISCO—Like other Game Developers Conferences in the past, this year's made sure to include a few meaty "post-mortem" panels hosted by legendary game designers. And with Atari—er, what remains of it—celebrating a huge 40th anniversary this year in the form of Pong's first home edition, the company's home console developers took center stage in the post-mortem pool.

"I'm going to tell you about the design of Adventure for the 2600, a game I designed in 1979," Warren Robinett said simply and plainly to introduce his own session. "Thank you. It was the first action-adventure game."

That's no understatement. Adventure may seem painfully simple by today's standards, but it wasn't just the first "search a dungeon for treasure and fight monsters" game for home consoles; it actually friggin' worked.

The giant tennis-ball-as-trackball is cute, but the real appeal of Butt Sniffing Pugs is in the stuffed pug butt that you activate by, um, bopping it with your nose. Otherwise, the game mostly asks players to run around aimlessly in a virtual dog park and discover secrets.

35 more images in gallery

At last year's Game Developers Conference, the experimental controllers of the inaugural alt.ctrl exhibit were some of our surprise highlights of the show. So when we heard the exhibit would be making its return at this year's show, complete with over a dozen unique and innovative new methods for controlling video games, we made it a point to swing by.

As much as we like the accurate positional tracking controllers shown off by the likes of Sony's Project Morpheus or the HTC Vive virtual reality setup that we saw at the show, there's something about the tactile oddness of these efforts that makes them hard to replicate in any other form. Oh, to live in a world where wacky controllers like these can find a place in the market (or in our local arcade) without needing to be shaped like musical instruments.

Click through the gallery above for much more information on the inventive controllers on display this year, or look below for video of some of the controllers in action—the Xbox 360 controller race really needs to be seen in motion to be fully appreciated. We've also thrown in some pictures (and an additional video) of the most interesting rarities on display at an Atari-focused exhibit put on the show floor by the Videogame History Museum. That one's for you old-timers that still think of the Nintendo Entertainment System as "that new-fangled Japanese upstart."

Crypto-based "ransomware" has become a lucrative business for cybercriminals. Since the arrival of CryptoLocker on the scene last year, a number of copycat malware packages have appeared to compete in the cyber-extortion market, encrypting victims' photos and other personal files with a key that will be destroyed if they don't contact the malware's operators and pay up. Recently, a new variant has emerged that seeks to raise the stakes with a particular class of victim by specifically seeking out files related to a number of popular PC games, as well as Valve's Steam gaming platform.

The malware, which is a variant of the crypt-ransomware called TeslaCrypt, superficially looks like CryptoLocker. But according to a number of security researchers who have analyzed the malware, it shares little code with CryptoLocker or its more well-known successor CryptoWall. And while it will also will target photos and documents, as well as iTunes-related files, as Bromium security researcher Vadim Kotov noted in an analysis on Bromium Labs' blog, TeslaCrypt also includes code that specifically looks for files related to more than 40 specific PC games, gaming platforms, and game developer tools. The games include both single player and multiplayer games, though it isn't clear how targeting some of the multiplayer games would affect users other than requiring a re-install.

The games targeted include a mix of older and newer titles— for example, Blizzard's StarCraft II and WarCraft III real-time strategy games and its World of Warcraft online game are targeted. Also on TeslaCrypt's hit list: Bioshock 2, Call of Duty, DayZ, Diablo, Fallout 3, League of Legends, F.E.A.R, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Minecraft, Metro 2033, Half-Life 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Resident Evil 4, World of Tanks, Metin 2, and The Elder Scrolls (specifically, Skyrim-related files), as well as Star Wars: The Knights Of The Old Republic. There's also code that searches for files associated with games from specific companies that affect a wide range of titles, including a variety of games from EA Sports, Valve, and Bethesda, and Valve's Steam gaming platform. And the game development tools RPG Maker, Unity3D and Unreal Engine are targeted as well.

Update: In an interview with IGN ahead of the BAFTA Game Awards, Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella confirmed that "we're working on a sequel" to Titanfall, and that "it'll be multiplatform." Respawn COO Dusty Welch added that the original game was a Microsoft console exclusive primarily for business reasons; the title would have been "prohibitive" as a multiplatform release, he said.

Zampella added that Respawn was branching out to other projects as well, "starting up a second team and doing some smaller stuff too." He also expressed interest in a model that added maps as free DLC, rather than splitting the community through a series of paid maps.